


Hey Little Girl; Comb Your Hair, Fix Your Make-Up

by lindsey_grissom



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 10:17:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13925067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: Daisy gets a parcel from Miss Bunting, Mr Carson overreacts and Mrs Hughes proves a point.





	Hey Little Girl; Comb Your Hair, Fix Your Make-Up

It’s his voice she hears first, before she’s even reached the last step down to the Servants’ halls, booming as it is from his open pantry door.

Footmen and maids line the hallway and she shoos them away with a glare, a wave of her hands.  Says nothing because she suspects she’d be best to observe first, speak later when it comes to whatever it is that has Mr Carson in such a tizzy so early in the day - they haven’t even sat down to breakfast yet.

Mr Carson’s back is to her when she stops by the doorway, looks in.  She can see his shoulders heaving with the deep breaths he’s taking and she stretches her neck further to see who the poor soul is that’s caught his ire this morning, expecting to see Mr Mosley or one of the new hallboys.  Instead, she sees Daisy, her eyes dark in her face, her lips bitten a bright red. 

“–sorry, Mr Carson, but Miss Bunting–”

“ _Miss Bunting_ sent you those, those _things_?  I might have known.   _You_ should know that anything Miss Bunting deems appropriate is anything but.”

Oh, he really is in a fine state if he’s saying these things to Daisy instead of saving them all up to let out when they’re alone in her sitting room this evening.  She wonders what on Earth the poor girl as done, what Miss Bunting can have sent that could reign down this ire on the cook’s aid.  

“But Mr Carson, the Ladies…”

“The _Ladies_ do not wear anything of the sort!  And I’ll not have an employee of this house saying so.  You’ll go and wash it off right now and I don’t want to see it on you again.  Is that understood?”

“But Mr Carson–”

“Is that _understood?”_

She steps forward then, perhaps later than she should and sees finally what the fuss is about. Bites her lip so as not to give in to the sympathetic smile at the sight of the black lines that have drawn themselves on Daisy’s cheeks from her painted eyelashes, the red wax-like coating to her lips.  The girl has done the best she could, no doubt, having had neither mother nor older sister to show her better. 

“Daisy, why don’t you do as Mr Carson says, and then see me in my sitting room?  Bring whatever Miss Bunting has sent you and we’ll see what we can do, okay?”

The girl nods quickly, gratefully and bites her lip, leaves more of the red on her teeth. Daisy hurries away and she turns to Mr Carson, braces herself to be his next target.  Better her now, than he continue on to another next; Lord knows what he might have to say to Mr Mosley if she doesn’t calm him down.

“Mrs Hughes, how dare you undermine-”

“Mr Carson, come here."  She says, breaks him off.  He stares at her, uncomprehending so she reaches out and tugs him by the lapels, pulls him close enough that if they were of a similar height she imagines she would feel his breath on her forehead. 

"Mrs Hughes, I don’t–"  She shushes him, quite impertinently, for which she will likely suffer later when he has time to think on it.

She tilts her head up so that he can look down on her properly.

"Look at my eyes, Mr Carson.  What do you see?"  She sees a question forming, a fight and shakes her head.  "Look at them, Charles."  And so he does, out of surprise more than anything, she thinks.  She has only used his first name once before and that was in quite a different situation.

"What should I be seeing, Mrs Hughes?” He asks eventually.

“Do you think my eyelashes are this dark naturally, Mr Carson, that they stand out like this by dint of nature itself?”

“Well, I-”

“And my lips."  Ah, she doesn’t have to ask him to look there, it seems just the mention of them is enough.  "Do you think they’re this colour without me having tinted them with something?”

“No, I– I mean I hadn’t thought–"  He pauses, obviously thinks over the earlier scene.  His gaze keeps flicking to her lips, she notices. "But Daisy, you saw her, Mrs Hughes.  You have only enhanced, that is to say, Daisy used too much…”

She takes pity on him then, stops his flustered stutterings with a hand, brushes her fingers down his abused lapels.  “Of course she did, Mr Carson.  Who has she got to show her?  Mrs Patmore would have been too busy this morning, and the poor thing still gets up earlier than any of the maids.  They’d have been down too late for her to ask them.”

“But she hasn’t anyone to impress.  I mean–” he tries to back-track, likely seeing the change in her face.

“Sometimes, a girl just likes to feel pretty, Mr Carson.  For themselves."  Which she imagines was probably Miss Bunting’s original intent with the ill-thought out gift.

He appears to be thinking, eyes remaining on her mouth.  "But her lips, not that I was looking, you understand, but I couldn’t help but notice, they looked waxy."  She smiles, anticipates him. "But yours…?”

“You tell me, Charles.” She says as he leans in.  Perhaps, not so different a situation after all.


End file.
